"I'll carry it as far as I'm able," Rohan said, tucking the chip carefully alongside everything else.
"Thank you, Dr. Farr. For believing me, when you had every reason from your own experience not to."
"Elowen," she said softly. "You've earned the right to use my given name, after everything we've shared together."
"Elowen," Rohan repeated, something warm cutting through the grief building steadily in his chest.
"Thank you."
He turned toward the platform one final time, the fracture's light washing over him with an intensity that made his chest ache with an anticipation he could no longer separate from grief, and drew every anchor he carried into a single, tight grip — Liora's original charm, her second, smaller one, Jorren's carved token, Hestia's warm mark of hearth, spear held firm in his other hand.
And everything I'm leaving behind here, that I'll carry with me regardless of what the crossing actually allows me to physically bring.
